Happy Halloween!

If you follow me on Instagram (here) you know that I have been creating wickedly yummy treats for the Little Ones in my home daycare for the past two weeks.  I am a little bit obsessed with all things Halloween and this year it migrated to my cooking.  Here is a peek at the deliciously spooky treats we enjoyed.

This was a simple yummy lunch.  I simply cut Jack-O-Lantern faces into flour tortillas, spread some goat cheese inside and baked at 350 degrees until the tortillas were crispy.

I froze these ghost, but you could also keep the bananas fresh.  Chocolate Chips created the eyes and mouth.  Alternatively you could melt chocolate, dip the bananas in it and then freeze.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds are a Halloween staple.  Over the years I have mastered this process, just a light coating of olive oil and some salt and pepper and these babies are done in about 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven.  Note I stir them around every 5-10 minutes to avoid burning.

These are beyond simple; pretzel sticks and cheese strings.  I did have one little one refuse to eat the cheese because she didn't recognize the cheese string she would normally devour, toddlers, geesh!

On the witching theme, these were made with sliced pitas, peanut butter and raisins, so simple.

Another yummy lunch idea is these Mummy Dogs, simply cut the hot dogs into a "person" and wrap in refrigerated biscuit dough.  The kids LOVED these.

A healthy snack is these Monster Mouths; peanut butter, apple, chocolate chips and pumpkin seeds.  The teeth options for these are endless, this is just what I had on hand.

Finally, the snack I LOVED the most, Mini Candy Apples. For these I followed this tutorial except I coated them in chocolate instead of toffee which I figured would be difficult for toddlers to bite through.  In the future I want to give yogurt a try (similar to these), which would need to be frozen and I am not sure how the apples would hold up.

Well these you have it, my week of haunted treats.  Have a great night trick-or-treating.

Kids In The Kitchen - Kale Chips

This is a great recipe to make with children of all ages as tasks involved are pretty "safe".

With my group of 1 - 5 year olds they were able to assist me by ripping up the kale and rubbing the olive oil into the leaves.

One of the older children took great pride in laying the raw kale on the baking sheet just so.

The results were delicious.

And as a bonus 4 out of 5 kids gobbled up this good for you snack.  One of the kids wouldn't even try it as it "looked weird", I guess you cannot please all 3 year old's senses.

Why don't you make Kale Chips with your Little Ones today.

Kids in the Kitchen - Homemade Bread

My little loves to get her hands messy in the kitchen and help me out with the cooking.  She is only 23 months old so getting her involved is a bit of a challenge.  She generally loves any mixing, pouring, or kneading but things like knives, stoves etc are totally off limits until she learns the concept of safety.

Have I mentioned before that I  run a home daycare?  That's right, in addition to my 23 month old I have a whole brute of toddlers at my heels as I try and make them lunch and snacks everyday.

Children love to get involved in the cooking process; in the past I have made pizza, cookies and apple pie with the daycare kids.  In honour of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day on May 16th, 2014 (you can read more about the movement here) I decided to make with the children a simple recipe that allowed them to be involved and get messy in the kitchen.

For those of you thinking I am CRAZY to cook with children this young I am going to break the process down into simple steps. 

First I prepped all the ingredients.  I did this in the morning before any of the children arrived and was able to think straight without littles grabbing at my pant legs or screaming out my name.  Cooking of any kind is easier when everything is ready to go, but it is especially important when little one's are helping, this way you don't have to run around the kitchen looking for supplies, you can simply focus on them.

While the kids were eating snack I mixed together the 2 cups of tepid water (hot water from the tap),  2 tablespoons of cornmeal, 2 tablespoon of instant dry yeast and 1 tablespoon of honey and let it rest for five minutes.

Then the fun started;  each child helped me individually by pouring a little of the 4 cups of flour into the mixer and then watched it mix.  It is important to stress the safety factor of NOT sticking our hands in the mixer when it is moving!  I always stop the mixer when having children this young add ingredients, as they get older they can perfect the skill of adding flour while the mixer is running, a skill I am still working on.

Then each child was given a small amount of dough to knead.  I gave them a VERY small amount as I knew  the chances of it actually being dough we would want to eat in the end was slim.  I made the right call as the dough was squished, thrown, licked and ended up on the floor, but they had fun.  If you are cooking with older children who are able to not consume or drop the raw dough by all means give them the full experience of kneading the dough; I used my dough hook on my stand mixer to do the job for me while I supervised the dough eating kneading.  As I told the children, you are trying to get the dough to "feel like play-doh".

It was then time to let the dough proof.  I am pretty sure the children had no idea what was happening and stared at me blankly while I tried to explain the science behind baking.  I filled the hour with this #tbt Magic School Bus episode and lunch.  Note: we did not eat lunch in front of the television, I do not believe in TV during meal times.  Meal times are opportunities to teach children table manners and the art of conversation and let me tell you two year old's can have some pretty amazing and funny conversations.

After lunch the children were each given two balls of dough and lots of flour and allowed to go to town creating whatever they wanted out of it.  Being under three, most of them kind of just squished it and said "all done", but older children would get a kick out of creating different shapes out of the dough.  Perhaps they could braid it??? Or practice their geometry making squares, circles and triangles; that's geometry right???

During nap time I baked the bread in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes and the children enjoyed it for afternoon snack with some healthy toppings of Honey Butter (recipe here) and some homemade Rhubarb and Ginger Jam a  friend had given me.

They had lots of fun baking in the kitchen.  This was my third successful baking experience with them and I cannot wait to share more Kids In The Kitchen experiences with you.  My little even created some Food Love with her raw dough (done completely by accident).

What did you do to celebrate Food Revolution Day????